


Bambola!

by sherwoodfox



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Christian Imagery, Explicit Language, Grief/Mourning, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Internal Monologue, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining, Self-Destruction, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Sexist Language, Sexual Content, Spoilers for Season Four, Suicidal Tendencies, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unrequited Love, self-actualization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:01:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23702770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherwoodfox/pseuds/sherwoodfox
Summary: Alternate title: Palermo and the Three Apocalypses.“Sergio told me the unbelievable. He wanted to do the heist- our heist, the gold heist in the Bank of Spain. His reasons- to save some boy, to honour Andrés- I barely noticed. I could hardly understand what he was saying.Did he see what a wreck I was then, what a hopeless monster? I don’t think he did. I was well dressed at the time, after all. He wasn’t the type to understand. Andrés would have understood, of course, he would have known just from looking at me what I had done, been doing, what I made myself into. But Sergio didn’t.So I went with him, for this reason as much as any other.”
Relationships: Berlin | Andrés de Fonollosa/Palermo | Martín, Helsinki | Mirko Dragic/Palermo | Martín Berrote
Comments: 31
Kudos: 97





	Bambola!

_Bambola!_

_Mi butterai._

_Bambola!_

_E non cambierai._

_E come fossi una-_

_E come fossi una bambola!_

_E come fossi una-_

_E come fossi una bambola!_

_E come fossi una-_

I wonder if Death is a handsome man.

(This I thought to myself.)

Most personifications of Death, after all, were men, weren’t they? A man with a long black cloak and a great scythe, or maybe an hourglass. Death, a man riding out from the gate on a horse that glowed green in the dark.

But no one ever said if Death was handsome. In the darkest of my hours, I liked to imagine he was. Did he ever get lonely, that mystery man, was he ever sad that everyone found him so fearful? Maybe I could comfort him. I could show him a dance, give him a kiss that would make him weak at the knees, embrace him with open arms and let him _penetrate_ me with that scythe, completely willing.

There was art in the idea. It could be a beautiful thing, being Death’s lover. I could wear a bespoke suit that was all black, which suited me, and I could live with him in a palace made from the shadows people kept at the backs of their minds. Black silk curtains and bone-china pearls. I loved the aesthetic. Maybe I would love it so much I would forget what it was like to be alive- forget all these other broken endeavours, which would become nothing but a pale prelude, the short before the beginning of the film. Meaningless and easily disregarded. I would be Death’s lover and I would be perfect and whole, and I so fell for this idea that it drove me mad at night.

I flirted with him, my lover, yes. I would drink all alone until nothing made sense anymore, and climb to the top of the apartment complex to look down at the street, see the headlights rushing by. They looked like stars to me. I would lean over so far I almost didn’t regain my balance, and fantasized about throwing myself into the sky. I could fall and fall and fall, until I finally got sucked in by the orbit of the sun, and then I wouldn’t be anything anymore.

On days when the sunlight outside my window was too bright, I took tranquilizers, maybe one or two too many- don’t ask, darling Death, I didn’t count. I did this so my sleep would be blacker than anything else, so I would go to a place where I could see nothing, hear nothing, think nothing. A place with no light nor memory. Beautiful! I only somewhat resented waking up.

I had my guns, of course. These were pretty things to play with, the edges shining especially bright in the moonlight. I would load these guns, and put them in my mouth, suck on the barrel like it was a cock- because I was good at that, sucking cock. I would kneel for Death like that, and play with the trigger like it was his balls, waiting hungrily for him to ejaculate. I would swallow it all down, if he did. An orgasm that didn’t create life. I never made it quite so far, though. Maybe I wasn’t rough enough.

Maybe it was because I didn’t know if Death was handsome. He had to be, otherwise it was all wrecked! But I could never find his face. In my dreams I would reach up to his great white skull, which was a mask- the kind that could be used in a robbery- and lift it, desperate to see him, but every time it was-

Oh, _fuck,_ every time it was _him!_

My apartment was still full of it, the details of our plan. I had the models, the toys, the maps. I had only destroyed some of it. I should take it all and burn it, it was incriminating and moreover it was _painful,_ but I never managed to do it.

Curse that man, because I still desperately loved him.

I knew my dreams were silly and fake. I didn’t want to be Death’s partner. I wanted another man’s shadow to chase. I was whipped, and I had no pride, because even now if he had beckoned I would have gone crawling back to him. Even after he had so humiliated me.

When I wasn’t thinking about Death, I was thinking about how he had abandoned me. What a cruel thing he had done- kissing me, giving me everything I wanted, I had thought that all my hopes and dreams and desperate fantasies were coming true! All those women hadn’t mattered, all his marriages had fallen apart because he really cared about ME, he said we were _soulmates,_ it had just taken him some time to figure it out like I had- that didn’t matter, I forgave him in an instant for keeping me waiting- and I would be whatever he needed, give him all the pleasure in the world, and we would be so _perfect_ together…

I had known bliss for a moment, there, when I had thought these things and believed them to be true. But maybe bliss wasn’t meant to last.

_He left me like that._

I still couldn’t believe it some days. I could believe perfectly well that he didn’t want me- that he wanted his _women-_ could believe that he had carried me along knowing how desperate I was, because it pleased and amused him. But I couldn’t believe that he had left me so completely. Cut me off at his heel, abandoned me. He didn’t even want to see me anymore. How was that possible?

I would have showered him in gold. I would have given him everything. We would have brought the world to its knees together, been for a glorious moment the most powerful men under the sun. We could have had _it all._

That future that I had so believed in was gone now, dissipated like a mild dream in the early hours of morning, dew evaporating on a spider’s web. Maybe it had never existed at all, but at one time, it had felt so tangible, so solid and _real_ under my fingertips- and now it was nothing. Paper in the wind.

Andrés had left me, and then he had _died._

I remembered watching the television coverage of the heist at the Mint like a starving man. Well, I was starving, I suppose. It had been the only thing to get me up, the only thing I cared about, the only real thing to penetrate my mind. I watched their every move with bated breath, knowing here and there what would come next but anticipating it all the same. I watched that coverage twenty hours a day, on channels in Spain and Italy and France and even America when, late at night, all the others stopped showing anything new. When Andrés came on-

_-Berlin-_

-with his bandaged head and his beautiful words, I cried, and stared at him like I could suck him in with my eyes if only I looked hard enough. Or better, maybe, I could fling myself through the screen- through space and time- and be there with him, standing in that stuffy room, listening to the sounds of the machines printing bills by the thousands downstairs. It wasn’t a bad plan- not as beautiful as ours, but handsome in its own way, and watching him on the screen I wanted to be part of it more than anything. Did he miss me? Did he think about me now that he was working, and I wasn’t with him? Did he wish I was in there, compare his new partners to me? Surely they couldn’t be nearly as good…

What would I call myself? All these masked Dalís were cities, pillars of civilization in different flavours. There was Tokyo and Rio and Moscow, Denver and Nairobi and Helsinki and Oslo and _Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Berlin…_

Palermo was a city in Italy. It suited me just as well as that cold German city suited Andrés.

I made myself sick watching those broadcasts. I could barely do anything else. I wasted away in there, because I never realized I was supposed to be hungry, never realized I was supposed to be tired. Never noticed how I bit my lips until they bled raw, and then turned to my fingers, and palms, and wrists. Never noticed how my eyes ached and burned. I followed those distant cities every step of the way.

So I was already destroyed when the news came out- when the police reported finding his body in the Mint.

If I was going to kill myself, surely it should have been then. Then, it really would have been Andrés under that skull mask. I could have gone to Hell to find him- though knowing me, we would have ended up in separate circles, just to torment my soul even more. I would find him anyway, and we could dance in those flames. It would have been a very perfect, even pretty, kind of end. Dead of a broken heart- like Romeo.

But for some reason, the moment that I learned he was dead, my own desire to die evaporated. Dew in the morning light- the moisture still hovered in the air, but it wasn’t so tangible anymore. 

I can’t explain it. I was still terribly sad. I was _pathetic._ I spilled milk at little Sergio, and spent all day in my night clothes, listening to old club music.

But I stopped my flirting. I danced a good deal more.

Slowly the sadness soured into something else- just as strong but much brighter. _Hatred._ And it was much easier to get out of bed when filled with hatred, instead of sadness.

(Even if what I hated was myself.)

Oh, I suppose I also hated the world, and circumstance, and what these things had done to me and everyone like me. I hated Fate, because she was a _woman,_ wasn’t she, and she had taken Andrés away from me, just like all the others. I thought about what my father had said to me so many, many years ago (my _father,_ God, how long had it been since I last thought of him?)- that I was a disgusting faggot and hopeless degenerate, how I deserved to boil in Hell and I was dead to him. Those same words were reflected all around me, and had followed me all my life- faggot, queer, pervert- and I had spent so much time considering myself above them and holding them at bay that I was _exhausted_ from it. And what did I have to show for my efforts? Only the fact that they were true. I really was unlovable. There really was something wrong with me. If only I hadn’t been born this way, I wouldn’t have needed him so much. Or better yet, keep my cock-sucking obsession and have me born a stupid woman! Then maybe he would have loved me back. As I was now, I was just a _monster._

There was also something very beautiful about hating myself. It filled me with such energy, in a way it was empowering! I was running on a fuel that burned so hot and bright I had no choice but to drive at two hundred kilometres per hour. A race to see what would happen first- running out of gas, or a collision that would leave me wrecked and unrecognizable. This ugly, desperate aesthetic- all bloody red and bright lights and strong scents- was pretty in its own way, and for a while I loved it more than I had loved the idea of Death.

I went out thanks to this energy- I ate and drank obscenely, and bought hundreds of euros worth of new clothes and jewelry, and went to bars and clubs every night of the week. I barely slept, but I looked beautiful in the mirror, wild and irresistible and dangerous, like a wolf. The weight I had lost from the sad time- which was too much- made me frightening, and I enjoyed that.

After all, there was something in me that was rather _proud_ of this hatred. If I was going to be a monster, then I would be the worst of them all! I would spit in Fate’s face, call her the worthless slut that she was, and declare myself Emperor of the deviants. My throne would be in Palermo, not warring Rome nor the prudish Vatican, and I would have everyone bow to me and despise me at the same time.

It wouldn’t be right to say that I ‘took lovers’. These weren’t lovers. I _fucked._ I _fucked, and fucked, and fucked._ I had a new man every night, and I would make sure not to learn his name, and I kicked him out come morning. I made him do the most depraved things to me- spill his filthiest fantasies on my face or deep inside my body- and I loved it, and I hated it. One night I wanted to be tortured, and the next to be the torturer. I could take more than one at a time, until whatever bathroom or car or gutter alley we were in stank with raw _sex._ Sometimes the only thing that could get me off was being choked until I blacked out, or humiliated- held down and made to lap at his balls like a kitten- and sometimes I wanted to bite his neck so hard he bled, or tie him up and use him like a toy, or fuck like beasts for hours until he had nothing left inside him and I couldn’t walk anymore. Whoever ‘he’ was, anyway. I didn’t care. I accepted any body as long as it had a penis, and any fetish- no matter how sick or dirty or depraved- as long as it hurt. The only thing I would not abide by was tenderness, or familiarity. I did not want to make love. I did not want any affection. I never let him clean me up or care for me, and I never cleaned him up nor cared for him. When it was over I never wanted to see him again, and I made this very clear.

_Boom, boom, ciao._

I did this until I lost track of myself. Dates didn’t matter, I was feral, and I stayed up all night and slept all day and had shots for breakfast at four in the afternoon. I did a lot of drugs, though I never got addicted to any of them, not in the way I was addicted to sex. I did not make any plans. ‘Tomorrow’ didn’t exist, what was there to plan for? If I was evicted or ran out of money, well...well, I didn’t even bother to think that far. I said all kinds of terrible things to the people I saw in the streets- for none of them were my friends- and I believed most of it only half heartedly, trying to vomit up all the poison that had filled my body and not caring where it came out. I was sure that everyone began to hate me just like I hated myself, which was perfect, that was the _goal._ I craved the thought that one night I would be murdered- by a drunk bigot or by the man whose cock I had down my throat, just as would be expected of a filthy, worthless degenerate like me. A meaningless and blurry death. No one would care if that happened. No one would care at all! 

The fuel didn’t run out. I was surprised, in a background kind of way. Perhaps I was invincible. Perhaps I could go on like this forever.

(But I didn’t.)

I didn’t, because Sergio came to see me again.

Dear baby Sergio. _The Professor._ I had forgotten about him. Funny, since he had been so instrumental in my demise.

He told me the unbelievable. He wanted to do the heist- our heist, the gold heist in the Bank of Spain. His reasons- to save some boy, to honour Andrés- I barely noticed. I could hardly understand what he was saying.

Did he see what a wreck I was then, what a hopeless monster? I don’t think he did. I was well dressed at the time, after all. He wasn’t the type to understand. Andrés would have understood, of course, he would have known just from looking at me what I had done, been doing, what I made myself into. But Sergio didn’t.

So I went with him, for this reason as much as any other.

He had adjustments he made to the plan. I didn’t mind- he really was a clever boy, sneaking in support structures in places where the foundation had been weak without my knowing it. He built the walls of the palace thick, protected from countless outcomes, ready to withstand a siege. But surely he knew it wouldn’t go well- wouldn’t go perfectly. Even with a perfect plan, things always fell apart. Surely he had learnt his lesson. His own supposedly flawless heist had left three of his men dead.

Oh, and damn me, because thinking that still hurt.

Being back in the monastery hurt also, but at the same time it exhilarated me. Hearing the echoes of my footsteps on the stone walls summoned raw sensory memories, of the smells in the air years ago, of the sounds. The taste of the pink champagne from his wedding, and dancing on green grass, smiling because I had managed to neuter my own heart for his happiness. I remembered how it felt to kiss him.

I couldn’t put these things out of my mind- but this time, they didn’t destroy me. I didn’t know if I was strong or not, but I at least looked the part.

At last, one of my dreams came true: I was allowed to become ‘Palermo’. I met the other cities who had been faceless Dalís on television- got to see the eyes of the ones Andrés had given up his life for.

(Though really, I knew it hadn’t been for them. It had been for the _art._ Most things were, for him.)

And weren’t we a jolly little band of robbers, of Robin Hoods? All eating our dinners together in such lovely spirits, lighting candles to take to bed with our nightcaps. A pretty little family, with so many handsome married couples, and it made me bitter because a unit of _man_ and _wife_ always looked so much better to everyone- so much healthier, so _natural,_ even though there was nothing natural about these marriages at all. Hell, one of the women even _called herself_ Stockholm. But I couldn’t have something like that, oh no, because I was a _deviant_ so I made sure to tell them so. I was unlovable and everyone like me was unlovable and my heart was black as pitch.

There was a man among them who called himself Helsinki. He was also a _freak,_ I thought, I knew it from the way he looked at me when he saw me first. Did he think I was pretty? I was, so there. And what a _man_ he was- a total _beast,_ all muscle and no brain, filled with that kind of pure, visceral strength of a Nordic man. I wanted him instantly. He was a bear, and I desperately needed to be mauled.

Because of this, I was too hasty. I assumed he would be like me. He looked like the type that was used to fucking in prison, after all. Surely, I reasoned, he would tear me apart.

But it was nearly impossible to make him rough with me. Even when I played all my worst tricks that night- biting and hissing and cursing him- he was infuriatingly, unfairly gentle. Acting like _I_ was the wild animal, and an injured one at that, that needed soft whispers and softer touches to bring me down against him. I hated it. I hated how hard I came- more than I had in months, how in the world was that even _possible,_ acting like I was starved when I had been gorging myself- and I had to make him leave me as soon as it was over, because if he didn’t I was probably going to fall apart.

(Shattered pieces of stained glass on the asphalt. I was an abandoned doll and I wanted to die.)

Maddeningly, I was still kinder to him than I had been to anyone like him before. I said some nonsense about being ‘brothers’, and embraced him, because though it was well within my capabilities to break his heart, at that moment I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know why. I had to settle for bruising it instead.

I regretted this come morning. I regretted having him at all, because of how he looked at me- some combination of ‘kicked puppy’ and _pity._ Pity?! How _dare_ he pity me! I decided that I couldn’t stand him, that he was needy and pathetic, and if he hadn’t figured out how things were for men like us yet, then I would show him.

Still, I had him a few times more- between the Professor’s lectures and our rowdy meals, in secret rooms so dusty and distant that when in them we might not have existed at all. I always tried to hurt him, or force him to hurt me- I wanted it to be _violent,_ and he was so strong he could have ruined me if he put his mind to it, but also _because_ he was strong he could make sure he never did. He could make sure neither of us came away with bruises, even when I wanted them there. How dare he pat my head like that, when I was kneeling for him? How dare he compliment me in his broken Spanish- he even tried it once in worse Italian- tell me that I was _cute_ and good at it, I hated this. I hated it so much, and I kept going back.

But I didn’t give him everything he wanted. I knew he could have held me for hours after we were done, could have fallen asleep with me pressed to his chest like I was a ragdoll. True to my cruel promises, I didn’t let him. I didn’t let him kiss me- except sometimes, in the heat of a moment, when I forgot everything, even my own name- and I desperately clung to the poisonous satisfaction I received from such things, knowing that each time I hurt him a little more. When we were all together- the happy family, all those precious, fruitful couples- I never let him touch me, and spoke to him only derisively. He never let on if he wanted it or not- if he wanted to sit side by side, put his arm over my shoulders maybe, make it clear with an embrace that I was _safe_ and that I belonged to him- that was impossible. We weren’t a couple, like Denver and Stockholm or Lisbon and Sergio or wild Tokyo and her kidnapped prince. It wasn’t love. I was too disgusting for that.

In this indelicate balancing act the days wore on, each one accelerating a little more, and deep down I still didn’t believe that it was really happening- that we were really going to do it, commit to the plan, set in motion a version of that distant, lost future I had once thought of so tenderly. I didn’t believe it until the day of- until _hora cero._ The sound of the bombs at the entryway were more than the rumblings of a dream.

When the vase shattered by my head- broken by a bullet intended to kill me- I had my first apocalypse.

Lying on the desk, in terrible pain from the glass shards buried in my eyes, I realized that for a long time now I had been insane. How hadn’t I noticed? Constructing such fever-dream narratives in my mind. I was terribly sick. Surely, whatever had grown inside me was too large to operate on now. Surely, there was no going back. I wondered if maybe I should die here, in the bank- die for art and the plan, die as Palermo, just like Andrés had died in the Mint as Berlin. After all, once this was over, there probably wouldn’t be much point to having something like me still breathing. 

This was what I thought when I tried to leave. My eyes were better- mostly, the edges of my vision still blurred, and I had trouble with the distinction between shadow and light, but I told no one this. Up close in the mirror, I could see my own scars, but I didn’t know how to feel about them- if they were beautiful or utterly hideous. 

Tokyo took over, and Nairobi needed to be operated on, and I packed a bag of muffins (like Little Red Riding Hood, heading to the wolf’s den). It was another fit of feverish madness that befell me, and I didn’t care. I was excited to die, and equally excited to trick the stupid police standing outside, so either outcome seemed better than staying locked up in this godforsaken bank with a plan that didn’t belong to me anymore, a plan whose art had been completely destroyed. A plan without Andrés, for whom it had been made.

I thought nothing of laying out the explosives- I thought it would be easy, to push the button. I didn’t care for any of these people, after all. They were all ugly and useless, just like I was, so why not send them out in a fireball? Why not ruin everything, just to have the world drop its jaw in shock? This was giving up, of course, but I had done that long ago. It would only be best to destroy the last of my goals and integrity alongside my body.

Helsinki came for me, and I almost pushed the button. I told myself to do it as he walked over, and again as he picked up the first bomb. I wanted to do it, I would swear this before Heaven- because I hated him, and this ‘ciao’ was long overdue, and _it was supposed to be easy._ I practically screamed these things in my mind as he picked up the second one. If I pushed it, he would be obliterated, just like he deserved- stupid fatty, faggot, bitch-princess, whore-!

I didn’t do it. Obviously. Instead I started crying. He held me and kissed me, every part of him warmer than I had ever been, and I didn’t deserve it.

This was the second apocalypse. I realized that I had never hated him at all. I didn’t know if I loved him- because I had only ever loved one person, and that had been with such a depth it had broken me. But I didn’t hate him. I knew I had been far too cruel. And for what? To try and trick myself into believing I didn’t want to be coddled and held, to belong to someone else? Fool. I was a monster and a fool.

But I still played silly games. I was bruised from the first two endings of my world, and resentful, and I didn’t see a version of these events where I was made better, where I deserved to live. At this point, I still didn’t really want to. I couldn’t even imagine a future.

In this state, chained to a chair like the rabid dog that I was, I made my worst mistake. The very, very worst mistake.

The third and final apocalypse was when Nairobi died.

She became our Christ, strung up and shot through the hand, and finally through the head. A creature of hopes without realization. The martyr for la Resistencia, the first blood spilled on our side of the war, and I had been her Judas. 

No, I still couldn’t see a future for myself. But that didn’t matter. I was self absorbed and arrogant and so caught up in my own waste and self-pity I had forgotten I was just a man- no more important than any other. Trying to make myself into art- Death, Romeo, Palermo- was an impossible act of hubris, and it served no purpose, for I had no relevance in the vast width of reality at all. I wasn’t like Andrés, who changed everyone he came across, and burned himself into their memories with a brand. I should have known that. He had been the Roman god, and I was only his doll.

I decided to get over myself, then, as the Americans would say. I would finish this thing as honestly as I could, and as well as I could, and with whatever happened after I would do the same. Nothing was going to come along and fix me- I had to do it myself. Stand up and try to clean out the poison that had spent so long festering in my insides, instead of giving it to others, or trying to pretend that it had some kind of esoteric value. Become just a regular man.

Strangely, sitting on the floor there, something inside me felt different. Heavier, but stronger at the same time. Maybe the strings had been cut.

“My name is Martín Berrote. I was born in Buenos Aires, but I live in Palermo, Sicily.”

_Doll!_

_You’ll throw me aside._

_Doll!_

_And you won’t change._

_And it’s as if I was a-_

_It’s as if I was a doll!_

_And it’s as if I was a-_

_It’s as if I was a doll!_

_And it’s as if I was a-_

**Author's Note:**

> The opening and closing lines are the Italian lyrics from ‘Bambola’, by Betta Lemme. Thanks for reading!


End file.
